This week's Sepia Saturday prompt shows an oven with what looks like some rolls freshly baked. (see below) Can't you just smell those rolls? With baking, cooking, frying, barbequing, what have you, there are some wonderful scents in the air in this old time postcard below. Imagine if you will the scents of popcorn, cotton candy, and hotdogs. I can see by the signs there was a dinner in one of the tents offered for 50 cents! Also Moxie, a rather stout carbonated beverage, was popular back then.

In the first postcard we see a scene of Ocean Front, in Salisbury Beach, Massachusetts around the turn of the 20th Century. Once there were tent like temporary looking structures. Today there are more permanent structures as can be seen in the lower Google Earth Street View photo.

Salisbury Beach has gone through many different incarnations since it was developed in the late 1800's There was a major fire that wiped out much of the beach center in the early 1900's. As mother natur…

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stata Center was designed by the famed architect Frank Gehry and opened in 2004. This is an example of deconstructivist architecture. It is the home of M.I.T.'s Artificial Intelligence Laboratories.

This was posted for Thursday Challenge which is a weekly thematic collaboration of photo bloggers. This week's challenge is "unusual." for more photos on this theme click here for Thursday Challenge.

The children you see below are of my father, on the right, and two of my aunts. The photo was taken in 1922. Their outfits are priceless especially my father's sailors uniform in vogue at the time.
Family names on my father's side have been used and reused in different forms throughout several generations. In the case of my Auntie Sis on the left, her name was Charlotte Verna, My grandfather's name, (her father) was Edward Vernon.
My Auntie Bunt's real name was Barbara Lauriet. Her middle name comes from the maiden name of her maternal grandmother. She has a two nieces that bear her names, my cousin Barbie, Charlotte's daughter, and my sister Laurie.
My father's name was Robert Bailey. His middle name comes from his mother's maiden name. He has a nephew, Barbara's son, that bears his name, Robert Bailey.

This week's Sepia Saturday prompt features two orphaned children from the Titanic disaster. (see below) In Boston there was a disaster of titanic proportions as well.
On January 15, 1919, people in Boston's North End were startled by a loud rumbling noise. They watched in horror as a five-story tank broke apart, unleashing a wave of molasses 15 feet high and 160 feet wide. Moving at 35 miles per hour, it traveled over two blocks and engulfed everything in its path. The disaster killed 21 people, injured 150, and caused property damage of more than $100,000,000 in today's dollars.
The tank's owners claimed that anarchists had dynamited it as a protest against the American government. In fact, the tank had been hastily constructed and overloaded. Years later, the tank's owner was found liable and ordered to pay compensation to the victims.
To this day it is said that on a hot, humid summer day the essence of molasses wafts through the air of the North End of Boston. …

This week's Sepia Saturday prompt shows a group of men playing a sport of "push ball." (see below) I can remember in my elementary school days we had a ball like this but it was called a cage ball. We would play a massive game of volleyball using this cage ball. I don't remember our cage ball being as big as this ball though.
Looking through my postcard collection the closet thing I could find to men in sport was this old postcard of men shucking clams. I have written a post about this postcard before. If you would like to know a bit more about clam shucking click here for a post entitled "Four Guys Shucking."

There are two things intriguing about this card to me. One is the rather cryptic message written on the side. "There is to be a bride in the King's Daughters. I will tell you who in my next... Ananias

The other intriguing fact about this card is that it was postmarked in Newburyport, Massachusetts on May 9, 1906 at 4:30 PM and arrived at it&…

Winter Scenes Spring and Summer Sunrise - Sunset
Photos are posted for Thursday Challenge which is a weekly thematic collaboration of photo bloggers. This week's and next week's challenge is "Best Photos of 2015." For many more photos on this theme click here for Thursday Challenge.

Fog - No Fog Shadows
North River Viewing Area
MBTA Commuter Rail Station
Salem, Massachusetts

The North River Viewing Area was designed as part of the new Intermodal Transportation Center at the MBTA Commuter Rail Station. It affords wonderful views that were once only accessed by traveling through on a train. Now waiting commuters can take some time to stroll through this relaxing area.

The seating area is designed in the shape of an old round house and turntable that once sat here. The granite blocks are a reuse from the the foundation of the old roundhouse and freight warehouse.

These photos were taken two days apart at around the same time of day. Besides the fog does anyone notice a slight difference in the photos?

This photo doesn't have much to do with today's Sepia Saturday prompt (see below) but what is significant is the date. I couldn't pass up using this old photo to honor my grandmother on this date. January 2nd was her birthday. To me it seemed that when we celebrated her birthday with her it was like having two New Year's celebrations in two days.

Gram wasn't much for being the center of attention so she was pretty much forced into the limelight on birthdays. She despised having her photo taken. She would always try to block out her face by putting her hand up. As you can see here we (probably my mother) caught her unguarded. She was at a bit of a disadvantage here as she had to hold her birthday cake in her lap.

The writing on the photo is my mother's. In 1967 Gram would have been 63. She lived to be 96 and she looked pretty much the same at 96 as you see here.

She was a strong woman having grown up on a potato farm in northern Maine in an age without electrici…